Magnepan LRS Speaker Review

[josh358]

In-room I get bass to down to around 60Hz according to my measurements with out a sub. I have the speakers about 4ft from the wall and my listening position is about 7ft back. I added an RSL Speedwoofer to fill in bass and have it crossed-over at 60Hz. I also really like the results it got with using Dirac on these speakers. They are really fun speakers and sound so different from everything else I have. When I A/B between these and a standard speaker I immediately hear the box.[/Q

Do you know how little 80 dB SPL at 70 Hz is? It sounds as loud as 55 dB SPL at 1 kHz.

View attachment 83748

But I assume that's based on Amirm's rolled-off bass? Correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't go back to check. I certainly didn't notice any lack of midbass impact on the percussion track at AXPONA.

In practice, with the MMG, I found that the practical limitation wasn't in the SPL capability of the woofer but rather intermodulation between the woofer and the tweeter. If the LRS is similar, I think you'd definitely want a sub if you like your music loud -- from what I've seen of SPL measurements people make online, most people don't play their speakers very loud at home. Personally, I found that the MMG was fine with classical, but I didn't like it with rock.

 

[CDMC]

You don't like Nickelback?

What concert costs 45 cents to attend?














50 Cent featuring Nickelback.

I will show myself out.

 

[josh358]

that's interesting... i wonder if there were some mistakes made.. room interaction would be a serious thought... listening(amir) seems to back that possibility...

I've seen in-room dipole bass measurements that are all over the place with the same speaker. Hell, any kind of untreated in-room bass measurements are all over the place with the same speaker. The problem is, you pretty much have to measure dipole bass in-room, otherwise you get nonsense results . . .

 

[hardisj]

Great thanks globes looks more than fantastic, but what are happening to horizontals where yours looks like software copyed and duplicated right side over to the left side ..

Because I still had to rename the files and I am lazy and didn't want to rename them all so just used the + for - on the horizontal. It ain't perfect but I've got other stuff I have to do today.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Lack of floor reinforcement is why the NFS measurements are sloping off below 300Hz. (I thought that would have been obvious to everyone.)
These speakers do inherently head south below about 60Hz, but they are designed to sit on the floor for normal operation.

I hope people are starting to understand why I suggested this speaker would be difficult to characterize with the NFS system.

Dave.

 

[josh358]

Yeah this was the only thing on my mind. If you had to go through all this and messing about trying to get it as functionally ready for listening as possible... What the heck were they doing to where they concluded "yeah, we're good here, put it on the shop".

I'm partly familiar with their design process and all of these things were considered, along with many that aren't mentioned here. If you hear them, you'll see that it paid off. I think there was something funky with Amirm's room or setup or even the speakers, because they shouldn't measure that way in the bass -- see Baxtr's comment above, he measured in room bass to about 60 Hz which is what I'd expect from these in a moderately sized room. (In a large room, Wendell Diller at Magenpan says the bass disappears and they sound like a midrange!)

 

[BYRTT]

.....One possibility is that it was measured in one of those unfortunate rooms that makes dipole bass extension disappear.....

that's interesting... i wonder if there were some mistakes made.. room interaction would be a serious thought... listening(amir) seems to back that possibility...

Think notice Amir used 3 days probably to be quality shure what he saw the first day was right and then not to stand on anyones toes publish bad data about thier loved speaker, also that Klippel robot was around into 2000 or more points around the speaker to calculate what is DUT sound field and what is room where normal box speakers gets nailed with 1000 points and also he showed the Klippel fitting error report in post 1 and low end was the fine end where from 3kHz and up was more problematic.

 

[Selah Audio]

Personally if I was interested in a dipole speaker I would take a Linkwitz design over a Magnepan any day. Just don't ruin it with a GR Lack of Research passive crossover.

 

[josh358]

Lack of floor reinforcement is why the NFS measurements are sloping off below 300Hz. (I thought that would have been obvious to everyone.)
These speakers do inherently head south below about 60Hz, but they are designed to sit on the floor for normal operation.

I hope people are starting to understand why I suggested this speaker would be difficult to characterize with the NFS system.

Dave.

Mea culpa and I feel like an idiot, I read too rapidly and had no idea that these were measured off the floor! You're right, of course -- you can't measure dipole bass that way.

 

[josh358]

that's interesting... i wonder if there were some mistakes made.. room interaction would be a serious thought... listening(amir) seems to back that possibility...

Dave Reite solved the problem, these were measured off the floor and you can't measure dipole bass that way, it disappears because of the acoustical short circuit around the bottom of the speaker.

 

[NTK]

Dr Toole told this story about dipole bass.

Fortunately the world has decided that omni woofers are to be the norm. Even most "full bandwidth" dipole speakers transition to monopole bass drivers. I think dipole subwoofers have joined the dodo bird, as they should. There are a couple of cardioid woofers out there somewhere I think.

It is a real world problem. Around 1990 I had my first interaction with noted subjectivist Harry Pearson (RIP) when I was to be called to help him with a problem. He had heard a speaker he thought he liked and wanted to review it. When he got the speakers he placed them in his carefully selected "reference" locations and seated in his "reference" seat something was wrong with the bass. The designer of the speaker was called to find out what was wrong. I was invited to join him in what was likely to be an interesting venture. We arrived at Harry's house in the AM, and without listening to a note of music, we got out a tape measure and a calculator. He looked on in stunned amazement. Then we asked if the problem was a deficiency of mid-bass. He said "yes, how did you know?". It turned out that his "reference" location was arrived at while listening to full bandwidth dipoles, and the speaker he was auditioning was a monopole. We moved both the speaker and his chair and all was well. Dipoles couple maximally at a pressure minimum/velocity maximum and monopoles couple maximally at pressure maxima/velocity minima. Dipoles have the additional complication of being vectored sound sources, meaning that the orientation relative to a room-mode null matters. Monopoles are not. There are good reasons to use monopole woofers and subs. He remained in a kind of trance, exclaiming that he had never experienced anything like that. For pure subjectivists science, even really basic science, is a great mystery and/or threat.

Any woofer or subwoofer I have ever encountered does not change its power response "vigorously" - they are minimum-phase systems that are quite well behaved. However, room modes/standing waves do change dramatically with location of the ears or mic. That is the problem to be addressed. Mode cancelling/attenuation using multiple subs greatly simplifies the situation, but only when the budget allows. Good news is that with multiple subs the total system efficiency rises, so they can be smaller subs.

 

[josh358]

Dr Toole told this story about dipole bass.

I'm a bit confused by Dr. Toole's answer here. Yes, a node is an antinode and vice versa when you switch from dipole to omnidirectional bass, but I don't understand why that would be an issue -- AFAIK, it just means that you have to place the speakers differently to achieve optimal bass smoothness in a room.

It's true that the orientation relative to a room-mode null matters, but in practice, dipole woofers have smoother in-room response -- this is apparent both in emulation and real-world measurements and likely a major factor in their more natural sound. A speaker designer I know tried some experiments and found that he could equal the quality of two dipole subwoofers but that he needed a swarm of four dynamic subwoofers to do so. On the other hand, Siegfried Linkwitz believed that the steady-state frequency response was not the differentiator:

I have investigated possible reasons for the qualitative difference between monopole and dipole bass reproduction by in-situ measurements and scale model experiments. I am convinced that the steady-state low frequency response is a poor indicator of the quality of bass reproduction, other than to point to the one or two modes that need to be equalized. The strongest correlation between measured data and subjective impression appears to come from a modulation-transfer-function measurement which is analyzed in the time domain. For example, when a short length of a 100% amplitude modulated signal with a carrier to modulation frequency ratio of 10:1 is used as stimulus, then the room response reduces the depth of modulation and increases the burst duration for different frequencies and room locations. A pattern seems to appear whereby the modulation envelope is subjectively preserved more frequently with a dipole than a monopole. This correlates strongly with the impression that bass reproduced by a pair of dipole woofers is more articulate and thus more realistic of the recorded source.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjk5aypzfXrAhXmhOAKHUdUCmIQFjABegQIAxAB&url=http://www.linkwitzlab.com/Woofer%20accuracy.rtf&usg=AOvVaw04OvFOhf0bNgWEXlW1rucT

Interesting, no?

In any case, I've found that dipole bass measures better and sounds more natural than monopole bass in the same room, for whatever reason(s). It would be wonderful if that weren't the case, since dipole woofers are so damn big.

 

[TheGhostOfEugeneDebs]

They haven't arrived yet . I ordered them like 4 weeks ago, 6-8 week ETA.

I got mine a month ago and I'm extraordinarily satisfied with them today. I was *not* when I got them, haha. I'd never experienced "break in" before this, but you could actually hear the bass panel "waking up" over the course of the first few hours of play. So, it went from, "where's the bass?" to "holy shit, EQ that shit down a bit, I can't hear the vocals" by the third day.

I didn't want to EQ it without first figuring out where the speakers sounded the best to me without EQ. Ultimately, settled on a slightly isosceles triangle where I am a bit closer to the speakers than they are to each other, with the tweeters on the outside, 29 inches from the back wall, toed in 1.5in.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun positioning them and re-positioning them for a few days. Gave me an excuse to hang out in the living room actively listening to music I liked. Once that was dialed in, the mids were still being sucked out, though I believe that's more the result of the room than the speaker, since I could move them closer to me and further from the walls and get them back at the expense of bass clarity.

Once I was able to do room correction with Dirac, they were perfect. I dialed in about 5db more bass and didn't let it correct anything above 10k. It's been ceaselessly impressive. It being a dipole means that it's absolutely filling the space with sound like nothing else I've heard. I'm not adding a sub to this setup, it simply isn't necessary in my room.

They don't sound as good as my first impression of them in-store, but that makes sense. In any case, I chose them over the Harbeth and Vandersteen speakers I also auditioned, not because they were less expensive, but because I absolutely enjoyed them more. Plus, they're monstrous monoliths that live in my living room and I love looking at them.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Thanks again for the time you clearly put into these reviews.

I think the extra detail will come in handy when the inevitable haters arrive... I know these speakers have quite a following.

They DO have quite a following—“Maggie” owners are fervent in their devotion. I knew these would be hard to measure but even given that, the results were startling—startling that they were so bizarre yet so many people seem to enjoy their sound.

 

[anmpr1]

From an historical standpoint Magneplanar was initially a three panel design that sort of looked like a folded room divider. They were typically sold or demoed with ARC (tube) electronics. My impression was that they were a panel representation of the 'Boston' or 'East Coast' acoustic suspension sort of sound. That is, never sonically offensive, probably too laid back, and striving for an overall FR coherency or blend without any particular emphasis. If one's musical tastes ran toward classical genres it was an engaging, alternative sort of loudspeaker. It certainly was not 'boxy'; and 'the box' sound really turns a lot of folks off. Magneplanars were sold as a 'practical' (i.e., non-tweako) substitute for speakers such as the KLH Nine or Infinity Servo-Statik.

A few years later, for Magneplanar dollars one could purchase a tall (and true electrostatic) panel speaker. When Hafler-Rockford discontinued Acoustat, my local dealer replaced them with Magnepan. There stated reason? "We wanted a panel speaker to sell." Acoustats had their own problems, but to me sounded much 'cleaner' and transparent than equivalent Magneplanars. That said, in a domestic environment I can completely understand why someone would want to own them.

 

[richard12511]

I'm not sure that it's so obvious.

Here for example are the in-room measurements that Dick Olsher made of the LRS's predecessor, the MMG:

View attachment 83719View attachment 83720

The first is in-room 1 meter response, the second far field third octave response. Where is the huge bass rolloff?

Given these are in room measurements, I still see a relatively large bass rolloff that seems to agree with Amir's measurements. Other than the peak @70Hz in the right graph, the bass looks equal to the rest of the spectrum, which would be in line with Amir's measurements. Good quality, accurate, and neutral bass should be ~8-10dB higher than the rest of the spectrum. Below (attached) are a couple examples of two different neutral speakers measured in two separate rooms(pre EQ). Obviously, it will depend on the room and listening distance, but as you can see, both of my rooms show the same general trend. In general, you should see a downward slope from low to high for a neutral speaker. I don't see that with those Maggie measurements you posted. If anything, the right graph(ignoring the room mode) actually has less bass energy than it does mid/treble energy, which is in line with the massive bass rolloff that Amir measured anechoically.

 

[richard12511]

Excellent, I'll be curious to hear the results! I'm still puzzled as to why dipoles measure so poorly and sound so good on acoustical music. I mean, I know some of the reasons, but not all. The spatial stuff is easy to explain -- polar pattern -- and so is the natural bass -- they don't excite the X and Y axial room modes. But planars have a transparency to them that all but the most esoteric dynamic speakers don't have.

Low harmonic distortion? Good nearfield waterfall? Directionality? I just don't know. But ESL's have the most of that transparency, followed by true ribbons, followed by quasi ribbons. Actually horns are somewhere in there too, followed by very esoteric dynamics (the Magicos, say, but not the Wilsons, which have more of a pleasant but mushy "hi fi" sound).

I have no experience with panel speakers, so I'm super excited to try them. Will be a brand new sonic experience

 

[wje]

In-room I get bass to down to around 60Hz according to my measurements with out a sub. I have the speakers about 4ft from the wall and my listening position is about 7ft back. I added an RSL Speedwoofer to fill in bass and have it crossed-over at 60Hz. I also really like the results it got with using Dirac on these speakers. They are really fun speakers and sound so different from everything else I have. When I A/B between these and a standard speaker I immediately hear the box.

Do you have the ability to use a 24dB slope for the crossover? When I had Magnepans, I read about a person using that option, so I tried the same. It made for a much better blend in using a subwoofer. A 12 dB slope, meant bit more of the subwoofer's presence with respect to it not keeping up with the Magnepan.

 

[josh358]

From an historical standpoint Magneplanar was initially a three panel design that sort of looked like a folded room divider. They were typically sold or demoed with ARC (tube) electronics. My impression was that they were a panel representation of the 'Boston' or 'East Coast' acoustic suspension sort of sound. That is, never sonically offensive, probably too laid back, and striving for an overall FR coherency or blend without any particular emphasis. If one's musical tastes ran toward classical genres it was an engaging, alternative sort of loudspeaker. It certainly was not 'boxy'; and 'the box' sound really turns a lot of folks off. Magneplanars were sold as a 'practical' (i.e., non-tweako) substitute for speakers such as the KLH Nine or Infinity Servo-Statik.

A few years later, for Magneplanar dollars one could purchase a tall (and true electrostatic) panel speaker. When Hafler-Rockford discontinued Acoustat, my local dealer replaced them with Magnepan. There stated reason? "We wanted a panel speaker to sell." Acoustats had their own problems, but to me sounded much 'cleaner' and transparent than equivalent Magneplanars. That said, in a domestic environment I can completely understand why someone would want to own them.

ESL's are the most transparent speakers I've ever heard, but the newer (x.7) Maggies use foil voice coils instead of wire and sound a lot more like stats than the older ones.

 

[ctbarker32]

I have the LRS and really enjoy them. I’m using a minidsp shd with Dirac and a sub. It really does help the low end and tonal balance.

I also have the LRS and use them with a REL T5 sub which is a huge help with the bass response. I am very happy with the LRS. Previously, I had a pair of MMGi's and side graded when the LRS were first released. I am a big dipole fan since I have owned several pars including my current Martin Logan Expression ESL 13A which I use in my Home Theater 5.1.2 setup. The sound field the MLs create for movies is awesome.

I'm not surprised the LRS' measure poorly/oddly. While I think current HI-Fi electronic measurements are now pretty straight forward, I wonder if when you get into electro mechanical transducer measuring and then you factor in the Room itself, that things start to get murky? Whether the LRS are "accurate" or not they can be very fun to listen to especially if you take the time to optimize and include a sub.

I wonder what Wendel (Magenepan) would make of these measurements? I doubt they (Magnepan) have ever made such detailed measurements? By all accounts they don't have the time. They're too busy trying to fill the long back orders for this speaker.

Poor measurements, exciting sound - such is the paradox of modern Hi-Fi?

Next up, I guess we need to measure a classic Klipsch Horn classic speaker and see how awful those are as well?

I guess I'll go back to my cmoyBB headphone amp I built last night that sounds great with my $14.99 Monoprice Hi-Fi Lightweight On-Ear Headphones.